Australia Teacher Who Got Student Pregnant, Bought Abortion Gets Six Years
Email this article
Printer friendly page
RSS Newsfeed
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
April 17, 2008
Parkwood, Australia (LifeNews.com) — An Australian teacher found guilty of getting a teenage student pregnant and then paying for her abortion will serve six years in prison. Stephen Peter Morrow, 55, could have spent as many as ten years in prison for his crime – which is a growing phenomenon.
Earlier this month, a jury found Morrow guilty on nine counts of sex with an underage girl. He was found not guilty on two other counts prosecutors charged him with in the case.
The teenage girl Morrow apparently had sex with is 25 years-old now and she told the court during the trial that Morrow had been her physics teacher while she was a Year 12 student at Melbourne Girls’ College.
The young woman described a relationship that began as a friendship with after-school tutoring that eventually turned into a sexual relationship.
She said Morrow took her to an abortion center in August 1999 after she became pregnant and paid for the abortion she had there.
Morrow was sentenced on Thursday in the Victorian County Court to six years in prison with no possibility of parole for the first four, according to a Reuters report.
During the sentencing hearing, Judge Thomas Wodak told Morrow he’s upset he’s still shown no remorse for his crimes and refuses to admit to his actions.
"You still maintain that you did not commit these offences," Judge Wodak said. "There is not and can not be any remorse shown by you."
Reuters indicated Wodak said Morrow’s comments in court revealed a "disturbing callousness and disingenuousness and a profound lack of understanding of the wrongfulness" of his actions.
Judge Wodak lectured Morrow and said he had a responsibility to live up to the trust his students placed in him, but took advantage of it.
"Instead of doing that, you seduced a naive young female to pander selfishly to your sexual desires," Judge Wodak said. "In doing so you ignored every consideration of responsibility, decency, propriety and good teaching practice."
Pro-life advocates say the case is similar to those in the United States, where criminals who engage in sexual abuse use abortion in an attempt to cover up their crimes after impregnating a teenager.
In February in the United States, Florida officials captured Papouche Edmond, a man who stands accused of sexually abusing a minor girl and forcing her to have an abortion.
Connecticut has seen four recent cases of abortion-sexual abuse coverup.
The most recent came in December when a pastor accused of sexually abusing two young girls reportedly urged a 13-year-old victim in a 2005 case to get an abortion to hide his alleged crime.
In Massachusetts, in November, a grand jury in Middlesex indicted 51-year-old Steven Infante on various charges of rape and assault and battery.
Prosecutors say Infante had a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old girl that began at that early age and continued until she was 21. When she turned 17, the girl became pregnant and Infante drove her to a local abortion business.
